Re: [PATCH 3/3] setup: always honor GIT_WORK_TREE and core.worktree

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Having said that, thanks for a nice summary.
...

quoted

5. The interaction with core.bare and implicit bareness are not
   obvious.  Clearly core.bare should conflict with core.worktree,
   but can GIT_WORK_TREE override that?  Maybe
   check_repository_format_gently is the right place for this check
   (rather than the setup procedure).

IIRC, we on purpose added support to allow GIT_WORK_TREE to tentatively
lift bareness of a repository so that people can

	cd /var/tmp
        GIT_WORK_TREE=. git --git-dir=/srv/git/jgit.git checkout -f

to get a snapshot easily.

quoted

(1) and (2) have been resolved by your work (nice!), (3) seems like
a case of "don't do that, then", and (4) out to error out in
setup_nongit (though my patch doesn't take care of that).  Given an
answer to (5) we could wholeheartedly and consistently support
worktree with implicit gitdir, as a new feature.

As long as we really can support it _consistently_, I wouldn't see a big
problem in resurrecting the historical accident as a feature.  You earlier
said gitolite also misuses the interface, but does the usage pattern it
has the same as the one in the debian script you had trouble with, and do
they expect the same behaviour?

I was re-reading this thread, and changed my mind; I think we should have
this series to avoid unnecessary regression, with or without clarifying
(5), before 1.7.4 final.

Even if some scripts you had trouble with started using GIT_WORK_TREE
without specifying GIT_DIR because they misunderstood what these are
designed to do, as long as the combination has been working consistently
with the expectation of these scripts, ans as long as we can keep the same
behaviour, I don't see a reason to change it.